This lesson introduces and explains the Pyramid of Hate, a useful tool in understand how small acts of prejudice can escalate to extreme violence. Each step in the pyramid is explained with examples to help illustrate the concepts.

A Horrific Pyramid

When we hear stories of the Holocaust in WWII, the atrocities in the Sudan and Rwanda, the many other acts of truly shocking violence and hate throughout history, most people wonder how anyone could do such things. How does national pride turn to death camps like the Nazis enacted in Germany? What you must realize is that none of these acts started as a sudden decision to commit the most heinous acts of hatred and violence. They are built on smaller acts of hate, seemingly meaningless bias or rudeness. However, these acts lay the groundwork for greater and greater levels of hatred to grow into violent actions.

A good way to visualize this process is through the Pyramid of Hate, which sets simple things like having a bias against a group or listening to hateful jokes but not challenging them as the base of the pyramid and the support for escalating behaviors. Let's take a look at the individual steps.

Pyramid of Hate

First Level (Bottom): Bias

The base of the pyramid, the lowest level, simply employs bias, preconceived, negative views of a group of people. This manifests in scapegoating a group as the cause of society's problems, accepting preconceived views, and not challenging hateful statements or jokes.

Sign challenging stereotype of women as weak

Second Level (From the Bottom): Individual Acts of Prejudice

The second level involves individual acts of prejudice, manifesting when someone tells hateful jokes or makes hateful statements. They may also avoid people of a particular group, ridicule them, or call them hateful names.

Third Level (From the Bottom): Discrimination

The third step, the middle of the pyramid, involves intentional discrimination, preventing people of a particular group the same access to employment, housing, and education but it may also escalate to harassing behavior. This is the first pyramid step that goes beyond our freedom of speech and enters into legally prohibited behavior. The discrimination is not directed at an individual and their behavior but must be based on a person's race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or gender to be seen legally as discrimination.

Segregated water fountains before the Civil Rights Movement

Fourth Level (From the Bottom): Bias-Motivated Violence

The fourth step often reveals the frightening nature of hate as it escalates into violence again people and their property. Individuals may be violently attacked or threatened, even escalating to murder and terrorist acts. This violence is directed to deliberately damage property and desecrate holy places when property is targeted. This is why we see churches or mosques burned or see synagogues sprayed with swastikas or headstones destroyed in Jewish cemeteries.

Memorial for Mark Carson, who was killed due to his sexual orientation.

Fifth Level (Top of the Pyramid): Genocide

The final step in the Pyramid of Hate is genocide, the intentional efforts to wipe out an entire group of people. We saw this behavior during the Holocaust in WWII when German soldiers killed over 6 million Jewish people as well as many additional people classified as homosexual, those with debilitating disorders, and the Roma, also known as (though this term is a racist slur) gypsies. To most people, this step is unspeakable and shocking, but with each step on the pyramid supported by the slow desensitization to hate, moving from violence to genocide is not a very big leap.

Tower of Faces - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Lesson Summary

When looking at horrific scenes of hatred around the world, especially when they culminate in genocide, the intentional extermination or intentional attempt to exterminate an entire group of humans, people often ask how it got that far or how it got so bad. The Pyramid of Hate helps explain this by creating five escalating levels of hateful behavior, each built on the lower levels. As each level's behavior is accepted and repeated, higher levels become more likely to manifest.

The base of the pyramid concerns bias, manifest in negative beliefs about a group of people or simply accepting hateful speech from peers including scapegoating those people as the cause of social problems. The second level transcends biased thought and involves actions like name calling, hateful jokes, and willful social avoidance. The third step covers acts of discrimination and harassment, actions prohibited by law in the United States and many other countries. The fourth step often reveals the frightening nature of hate as it escalates into violence again people and their property as well as the desecration of sacred spaces. Finally, the last step of the pyramid, located at the very top, is genocide.

Summary:

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